Attempt all the questions.
Section-A
Question1) Describe the challenges faced by the developing economy like India in selection & implementation of appropriate technology. How could India prevent being a dumping yard for outdated, costly and irrelevant technologies?
Question2) Elaborate the four core elements of technology and the entire respective component with examples.
Question3) Explain the role of Information Technology and its implication in Technology Management.
Question4) Describe the Japanese model of technology development. What are the issues in implementing three phases of Japanese model?
Section-B
Case Study
Benchmarking: Tales from the front
MOTOROLA
Motorola was the early pioneer in benchmarking. Among its other successes, it managed to slash time taken to close company’s books at year-end from 14 to two days.
In early 1980s, company set the ambitious goal: It will improve the set of basic quality parameters tenfold in five years. The aim was reached, based only on internal comparisons, in three years. There were congratulations all around, handshakes, merit badges for all. Then Motorola looked outside. It sent teams to visit plants of its Japanese competitors. To their chagrin, the teams found that Motorola will have to improve
its tenfold-improvement level of quality measures another two to three times just to match the competition.
Kenneth J.Obrzut, director of group sector strategic programs in Motorola’s MIS department, offers the moral of the story: “Benchmarking helps determine what your accomplishments really are, and gives you the chance to match or exceed the best in the business.”
For one factory in Florida, Motorola has since borrowed the order-entry process from Wal-Mart, adopted Benetton’s idea of asking its stores to relay customer preferences on store items directly to headquarters through computer linkup, and even scavenged techniques from Domino’s Pizza. Ten years after `Motorola began benchmarking, the company routinely fields benchmarking requests from those same Japanese companies it toured the first time around.
Case Question:
Motorola moved from internal to external benchmarking. What justified this move? Do you agree?